THE MAN WITH TIMOTHY MCVEIGH

ANNALS OF LAW about lawyer Michael Tigar, who is defending Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma City bombing case... When Nichols appears in the doorway, Tigar snaps to his feet. This curious gesture has the effect of making those not standing--most notably the ten or twelve representatives of the prosecution who are in court on any given day--look almost rude. It's just hokey atmospherics, of course, but it sends a message. Tiger, who is one of the most theatrical defense attorneys in the country, says that he wants only to convey his respect for his client, but clearly he also wants every eye in the courtroom on him... Though he grew up in L.A. and has lived most of his adult life practicing law in Washington, D.C., he has mastered the persona of the Western country lawyer: cowboy boots, outsized silver belt buckle, and home-style indignation. Through many hours of conversation with writer, Tigar dropped one obscure quote or another every few minutes--a diversionary tactic, writer concluded, for keeping hard questions at bay. He has long had a reputation as a crusading leftist attorney, and he seems at first a peculiar choice to represent a right-wing extremist who is accused of mass murder, but, in fact, the case marks a strangely appropriate culmination of Tigar's career. He has always served clients holding a wide range of ideological views-- from bombers in the Students for a Democratic Society to the accused (and exonerated) Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk, and from suspected gays in the military to John Connally. The common theme of these cases is Tigar's hostility to the oppressive hand of the state. Like many talented criminal-defense attorneys, he excels at shifting the focus of his trials from the behavior of his clients to the misbehavior of police and prosecutors. In a case where there are scores of actual victims, Tigar will attempt to portray his client as a victim, too--a victim of an overzealous investigation and a fanatical co-defendant. Tigar's rhetorical gifts may enable him to succeed with this ploy. Tiger is so skilled, in fact, that his career raises provocative questions about the moral ambiguities of a defense attorney's job... In the sixties, Tiger signed up as an associate at the Washington law firm of the trial lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, who brought Tigar into several of his highest-profile cases--for such clients as the former Lyndon Johnson aide Bobby Baker, Adam Clayton Powell, and John Connally. Tells how he successfully defended Cameron David Bishop, a leftist radical, on charges of dynamiting 4 high-voltage transmission towers in Colorado in 1969... Describes a Marxist book he wrote called "Law and the Rise of Capitalism" & mentions his messianic sense of lawyers at the center of a historic fight for social change... Tells how Tigar intends to save his client from death by lethal injection... The evidence against Nichols is too strong, though, for Tigar to think that he can shift responsibility for all of his client's actions to a phantom named John Doe No. 2... Tigar will lean heavily on the fact that Nichols, unlike McVeigh, went to the authorities of his own accord. Tigar has a teaching position at the University of Texas law school and he has become a skilled amateur playwright there... Describes dialogue between Clarence Darrow and an anarchist about the law, as imagined in one of his plays...